Eating Speed Effects Insulin

The faster you eat, the more difficult it is for the hormone insulin to do its work in your body. That means that fewer nutrients reach your muscles, and probably that more get deposited in your fat reserves. In the long term this leads to a much higher chance of developing diabetes type-2.

We've extracted these words of wisdom from a small epidemiological study published recently by endocrinologists at the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in Clinical Nutrition. The researchers collected data on 234 people who had recently been diagnosed as having diabetes type-2. They compared these data with data on 468 people who did not have diabetes.

One of the questions the researchers asked the participants was about the speed with which they generally ate their meals. If they compared themselves with other people at the same table, did they eat faster? Or at the same speed? Or more slowly?

The researchers discovered that the fast eaters were twice as likely to have diabetes type-2 than the slow eaters. The researchers corrected for factors such as genetic predisposition, BMI, waist measurement, education, smoking, the amount of triglycerides in the blood and physical exercise. Click on the table for a complete version.

If you eat fast, you eat more; if you eat slowly, you eat less. [J Am Diet Assoc. 2008 Jul; 108(7): 1186-91.] That's probably because the digestive system produces all sorts of appetite supressing hormones while we are eating. [J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2010 Jan; 95(1): 333-7.] Production of these hormones is slower in fast eaters. Apparently these hormones also ensure that the insulin hormone can do its work.

There is alot more at play here than just eating speed. The diet makeup itself is the most important factor in developing diabetes Type II. It would have been better for them to take these measurements and what not by having the patients eat the same exact proportions and training the same exact amounts. It you eat half a pound of protein meat for a meal but eat it really fast, you are not going to get a quicker or larger insulin response than if you ate a bowl of sugary cereal but took half an hour to eat it.

So data can be inconclusive when you are not considering the type of food digested as well as type and level of training that the individual undergoes every day.

There is alot more at play here than just eating speed. The diet makeup itself is the most important factor in developing diabetes Type II. It would have been better for them to take these measurements and what not by having the patients eat the same exact proportions and training the same exact amounts. It you eat half a pound of protein meat for a meal but eat it really fast, you are not going to get a quicker or larger insulin response than if you ate a bowl of sugary cereal but took half an hour to eat it.

So data can be inconclusive when you are not considering the type of food digested as well as type and level of training that the individual undergoes every day.

Well put. In addition to that, "fast" food is linked to diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, etc. Those in a hurry will turn towards less healthy food choices, ultimately affecting their insulin levels. I agree that the key here is not eating speed, but in fact the food choices one is making. Eating speed is simply a byproduct of that.

Some of these articles are so half assed... Correction, most of these articles are half assed!

Tax payer money and college tuition money is getting wasted on alot of studies like this too.

I can't understand why "scientists" who have been studying science for years on end can't seem to understand the importance of controlling the studying by establishing enough constants. They should have:

1) Established a constant in food type & food proportions
2) Established a constant training regimen
3) Established a constant time window for the feeding

And lastly, instead of comparing all these different people to one another, they could have compared the individuals to themselves, giving them two different feeding opportunities using the exact same constants on the same day of another week to ensure a most accurate study.

Rather, they had a variable in food, variable in portion and a variable between the individuals as each individual may respond entirely different from the next when it comes to insulin sensitivity, even with the same exact foods. Too many variables. You can't conclude crap with that many variables.